K-College gets $5.6 million donation for scholarships to increase diversity

KALAMAZOO -- Kalamazoo College announced Friday that Jon Stryker's Arcus Foundation has pledged a $5.6 million donation as part of an effort to diversify the school's campus.

Under the plan, Kalamazoo College will give 50 students from the public school system in Los Angeles an all-expenses-paid education.

It is made possible through a partnership between the college and New York-based Posse Foundation, which connects high-achieving students from urban districts with highly selective colleges. K-College has been striving in recent years to bring more racial and geographic diversity to its student population.

Stryker, an heir to the Stryker family fortune, is a K-College alumnus and he sits on the college's Board of Trustees. In 2001, he donated $5 million for the college's study-abroad program.

Arcus Foundation officials say the project is in line with its mission to achieve social justice.

"I benefited from a Kalamazoo College experience and am eager to see underrepresented students have the same opportunity," Stryker said in a written statement.

The students, known as Posse Scholars, come from ethnic and racial groups "underrepresented in American higher education" according to college officials.

K-College will take on a group or a "posse" of 10 students each year, with the first class of scholars starting in fall of 2009.

The effort fits with the college's work to increase the diversity of its student body, college officials say.

"We want (more) students from out of state," college President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran said. "At the same time, we would like to have increased economic diversity. We'd like to have increased racial and ethnic diversity. So part of what this participation in Posse does is it enables us to realize all those goals."

Posse Scholars hail solely from the public school systems in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.

The Posse Foundation acts as an agent to help identify high-achieving students to be selected by schools such as Boston University, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and Oberlin College in Ohio.

The organization is looking for the "the most highly ranked schools, the schools that understand how we're moving forward on this issue of diversity," said Deborah Bial, president and founder of the Posse Foundation.